


Community Meeting – Or, Something in the Walls

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Happy 4/13!!!, Humanstuck, M/M, Slice of Life, but with a ghost???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 17:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18451505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Gamzee and Karkat go to an apartment Community Planning meeting.  This is the first one yet to have an EXORCIST come by!





	Community Meeting – Or, Something in the Walls

**Author's Note:**

> Hi~ I hope you enjoy this fic if you read it!!! It’s…. Kinda a strange premise, I know. Let’s say I started this while I was attending a different sort of Community Planning-ish meeting a while back. That was a long, long meeting. No ghosts that I know of, though.
> 
> Happy 4/13!!! I hope the day treats all of you really well!

Gamzee didn’t usually attend any of those motherfucking Community Planning meetings. Whatever the fuck happened around the New Alternia apartment complex just kinda happened, am I right?  Maybe one day he got home from work and there were some fucking brand-new mailboxes just waiting there all shiny and strange and he didn’t even have a key to get his heaven-blessed mail.  Maybe there was a water shut-down kinda deal going on and his shower would cut off halfway done.  Shake things up a little.  It was all good.

That’s the sort of thing Gamzee said about all that noise, though truth be motherfucking told he usually up and forgot about the meetings…  Or, you know, boycotted them out of solidarity ‘cause his boyfriend was in the middle of a fight with somebody they’d probably run into there.  Karkat was motherfucking excellent at picking fights, some days.  Gamzee felt like it usually happened when he was feeling shitty about something completely different – like the time Karkat squeezed out all Sollux’s laundry detergent into the trash in the middle of an argument.  That shit most likely went down the way it did ‘cause Karkat’d just gotten another rejection letter for one of his screenplays.  Or like when Karkat slipped a bunch of increasingly furious memos under Vikare’s door about model airplane glue-related fumes in the hallway.  He was all bent out of shape just then already, see, ‘cause Sollux had infected his laptop with some kinda virus as revenge for the detergent thing.  You know.

Gamzee could usually rope his boyfriend back before shit went too motherfucking far, but hey. Some cool-down time never hurt a soul.  Karkat was so busy lately, it was nice to get a little at-home time.  Order some takeout, eat on the couch with Karkat slumped up against him and murmuring commentary on whatever kinda movie they were watching.  Something about script writing techniques, something about Will Smith, something about camera angle.

Maybe Karkat would write for a while, even – trying to cram in some thoughts and realness before he had to get to bed…  Early work in the morning, you know.  And Gamzee’d sit close by, practicing twisting up balloon animals or working on material for one of his acts.  Something like that.  Karkat said shit like he’d never thought he would wind up with a fucking birthday clown anywhere near his actual bedroom – _(and what the fuck was Gamzee doing with his life?  Oh my God.  No. Don’t you dare ride your unicycle inside!  Remember when you just about cracked your fucking skull open?  Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!) _– but he said that kinda thing with his eyes all soft, nowadays.  He’d seen Gamzee perform a bunch of times, by now.  Wasn’t as embarrassed to wave at him in costume as he’d been back when Gamzee’d started up that gig.  Didn’t talk about Gamzee quitting much anymore, either.  Didn’t talk about “real acting,” which was more than slapstick and talking in fucking horn-honks – or if he did, he caught himself and Gamzee chuckled, or something.  Pulled him close.  Kissed his forehead.

Gamzee had seen Karkat carefully tying the laces on his big ass plastic-y clown shoes, after all.  Testing the knots so they wouldn’t come loose midway through a show…  Brushing a little dirt off the shiny purple toe.  He’d seen all that shit and felt so loved he hadn’t known what to say.  Karkat didn’t know Gamzee’d fucking seen him, actually, so it wasn’t like he’d really _had_ to say anything, but…  Still.

…

That morning, though, it looked like Karkat and Gamzee would both be going to the motherfucking Community Planning meeting.  Looked that way ‘cause there’d been some incredibly loud pounding on the door to get them up for it, you know.  Didn’t manage to wake _Gamzee_ up, but Karkat?  Yeah, Karkat had been woken up by their neighbor Vikare dropping a mug of tea on the way, way other side of his motherfucking apartment, before, and Vikare wasn’t even the kinda motherfucker to scream or cuss about that kinda thing.  Of course Karkat woke up, and then he shook Gamzee awake, too.

By the time the world swum into some sort of groggy focus for Gamzee, Karkat was all about discussing the issues of the day.  By the time Gamzee’d gotten a little coffee in him and splashed water on his face, the meeting had already just barely started downstairs and Karkat had printed out a bunch of old e-mails and mysterious graphs and shit.  Karkat was waiting by the door and hissing, “ _C’mon_ , already,” and all that.  Gamzee came on, and Karkat smoothed his tangled hair down for him a little on the way downstairs.

It seemed the Community Planning meeting would involve a couple points of discussion that day.  Something about potential lawsuits and a malfunctioning elevator – with a full PowerPoint presentation provided by a guy called Tagora Gorjek, who had slipped expensive-looking business cards under everybody’s doors – and something about what sort of weird, possibly-mummified things management had found in the wall while trying to install drinking fountains…  And then, of course, what Karkat was really interested in talking about: apartment improvements.  Apartment improvements that came with rent hikes.  Apartment improvements that had _apparently_ led to those graphs Gamzee couldn’t completely understand, just yet, but that had to do with rental costs across the country.

To be real with you, Gamzee was a lot more interested in the dead stuff that’d been in their motherfucking walls, if he was gonna be interested in anything.  He and Karkat slunk into the meeting late and took a seat between Sollux and some other guy they’d never officially met.  Sollux muttered something snarky to Karkat, who barked a laugh and muttered something snarkier right back.  Gamzee stared at the row of empty-eyed, crumbly-bone figures arranged on a plastic table at the front of the room, next to a drinking fountain model and some tile samples.  The mummy-whatevers, carried out of their wall like picking shards of glass from skin.  Like stretching worms out of the motherfucking dirt.  There was something that might’ve been a tiny baby goat, too, though it was _wrong_ in a way Gamzee wouldn’t have known how to explain.  Wrong in the twist of its neck; wrong in the way it looked so sticky and wet from across the room.  It was in a clear plastic bag, sealed off from the world.

Gamzee looked at it and looked at it – trying to decide if it was a goat or not, mostly – and as he was watching he sort of thought the thing might have _twitched_.  But that also might’ve just been Karkat jostling his arm, getting all motherfucking excited about whose kitchens would be getting remodeled, exactly, and whether actual residents got any kinda say in that shit.

Everybody talked about different elevator maintenance companies for what felt like a long, long time, then.  How often elevators should be inspected, and how expensive it was to replace entire elevators, and whether an open elevator shaft hanging around during a replacement period was worth the potential legal trouble of somebody ignoring all the warnings and falling down into the fucking pit.  Karkat stood up to argue his points a little more loudly, every now and then, and Tagora Gorjek himself paced around at the front of the room looking smug.  The guy seemed so at home, with all this debating.

Gamzee had never realized people had so many opinions about different kinds of elevator doors, but hey.  Lesson motherfucking learned, right?

It wasn’t until they’d been talking about elevators for so long that Gamzee started drifting off again – just a little bit, with his head lolling down into his chest and then jerking back up with a woozy sick feeling in his stomach – that he realized there was a strange, silent woman at that meeting who he’d definitely never seen around the apartment building before.  She’d started out sitting over by the door and had now – slowly, slowly – seat-hopped nearly all the way over to the crooked dead things on the table.  She was small and wearing a dark red lacy sweater; there were stains on the knees of her jeans that might have been blood.  Her hair was long, falling in heavy curls, and she smiled back reassuringly when she noticed Gamzee looking at her.

Karkat asked Gamzee to back him up on something, and Gamzee said, “Oh, yeah.  For fucking sure!” without really thinking about it.  By the time he looked back at the stranger with the bloody knees, she was sitting directly next to the dead things.  She was looking at Tagora Gorjek’s elevator show, yeah, but also murmuring something long and sing-song just under her breath.  The maybe-goat thing truly, _without-a-motherfucking-doubt_ twitched _,_ now.  It spasmed as Gamzee watched, and its chalky insides splattered against the plastic bag holding it tight.

Gamzee nudged Karkat and tried to show him all that shit, but Karkat just rubbed his back distractedly.  “This’ll be over soon,” Karkat told him.

At that point, Gamzee thought he’d make chocolate chip pancakes when they got back up to their apartment.  He thought he’d fall asleep on the couch sometime that afternoon, and possibly Karkat would fold himself in next to him…  Or else maybe Karkat would end up sitting on his belly to make a point about getting his ass in bed if he wanted to sleep.  Either way.

At that point, Gamzee couldn’t have guessed what was going to happen next, when one of his neighbors strode up to the front of the room and tried to sift through the tile samples.  Something about whether the new elevator – if they were actually gonna get a new elevator, of course – should go well aesthetically with whatever kinda tile they were going to use for the new bathrooms/drinking fountain cubbies.  Something that got cut off pretty abruptly when one of the mummified things tumbled forward and fell off the table.  It splattered open with a howling, shivering scream.  It was chalky inside, and then rotten and buzzing with a cloud of flies battering themselves against the plastic bag.

The things on the table were moving more frantically, by then.  Bucking and untwisting their snapped necks; seeming to choke.  Trying to breathe.  The woman with blood on her knees was standing, speaking her spells – Gamzee was sure they were spells – outloud.  Her eyes had gone a deathly, empty white, and there was a creaking in the walls all around them.  A splintering, like the apartment building was trying to split itself open, more dead things crawling out.  Gamzee might have been mistaken, but he thought he noticed a few more people scooping up Tagora’s business cards, hearing all that.

They probably would’ve gotten a little off rent, if it’d been known the place was fucking haunted.  Gamzee might’ve tried asking the things in the walls what was up, every now and then, too.  He’d always believed in what Karkat said were impossible things, from the heavy cross tucked under his shirt to the angels tattooed down his spine, splitting his back in two.  Looking around the meeting room, it sort of felt like Gamzee was one of the only people there not too,  _too_  surprised by any of this shit going down.  His father had told him about stories like this.  The world was full of miracles, after all, both horrific and beautiful and always hanging around like blood just under the motherfucking skin.  Karkat hadn’t understood why Gamzee would use his theater degree to be a fucking clown, and Karkat hadn’t understood the idea of awful miracles.

Something in the apartment complex was motherfucking pissed, all the same, and not so much about kitchen renovations or rent hikes or elevator maintenance scheduling.  Something seemed pissed enough to wanna squeeze  _all_  their laundry soup out into the fucking trash, right about then, and when Gamzee stood up to go –

Pulling Karkat up by the sleeve –

Listening to the woman with blood on her knees gathering the dead over to her, winding spirits between her fingertips and shushing them like some kinda fucking necromancer in one of Terezi’s roleplay games –

That was when Gamzee wasn’t himself, anymore, for a moment.  That was when he wasn’t in his rumpled pajama pants in the basement of the apartment complex, surrounded by graphs and tile samples and people who cared a lot more about community planning and fairness and talking loudly than he’d ever learned how to.

Gamzee kept reaching and reaching for Karkat’s sleeve, then – reaching for thoughts of chocolate chip pancakes to come, and the performance his clowning agency had scheduled for him the next day, and what he knew Karkat was saying…  What he thought he might’ve half-heard, words garbled together and unreal even as he thought he might hear so much fear in Karkat’s voice…  But then there was nothing left to grab on to.

…

Deep at the moldy heart of the apartment complex, someone waited.

Someone with glassy plastic eyes and too many souls, souls gathered up in pieces and stitched into a garish, rotting patchwork.  Souls stuffed into limp soggy cloth arms, decaying into the brick.  This someone took tribute; this someone fed off rage.  It would mean taking the whole apartment building apart, brick by motherfucking brick, to find this someone’s hiding spot.

They were a puppet, and they weren’t.  Gamzee knew them in an instant, more than he’d ever known about elevator maintenance even after listening for ages and ages and –

…

There were things rotting all around.

Time came for all of them.

Brick by brick, soul by soul.

…

Time came.

…

Gamzee snapped back to the world soon enough, though – it had only been a minute, maybe.  He came back to the sound of Karkat yelling, which some people might’ve said was only motherfucking appropriate.  Sollux, probably.  Sollux would’ve said that shit for sure.  Gamzee’s boyfriend’s voice was hoarse and furious – even more furious than that time one of Vikare’s airplanes had smashed through their bathroom window while he was brushing his teeth.  That had made for a lot of splattery toothpaste-y yelling, though, back then…  Sollux had gotten a picture of Karkat storming out into the hall, actually, that’d served as some pretty good blackmail ammo later on.  Gamzee didn’t think he’d have minded pictures like that of his own self, but then there  _were_  pictures of him with pie dripping down his face on his clown agency’s website.  Karkat had been right: Gamzee didn’t have to motherfucking understand.

There hadn’t been any cheerful-voiced exorcist around assuring Karkat that everything was going to be fine, back then, either, of course.  The woman with blood on her knees promised she’d sealed up wilder, hungrier spirits than this – probably – and that thanks to this little kerfuffle here she was pretty sure the apartment complex would finally respond to her e-mails!  They’d take care of this shit, and see that the dead were done right by or whatever kinda fancy way she said all that.

The woman with blood on her knees paused there, as if for understanding or laughter or – more likely – as if she’d just run out of words.  Gamzee wasn’t the only one who knew the thing in the walls a little better, now.  It had fed off of all of them, and the mummified things that belonged to it were still mostly on the table, leaking gore and humming with flies.  Gamzee wasn’t the only one who felt too  _watched_  as he sloppily pried his eyes back open and heaved himself up to sitting on the sticky linoleum ground.  Karkat was clenching his hand so tightly it ached; Karkat’s arm looped around Gamzee’s shoulders as soon as he’d managed to get himself up a little bit, and Sollux reached down to pat his arm like, “Hey, welcome back, man.”

Sometimes, things  _just happened_  around the New Alternia apartment complex, and sometimes that shit came out of the motherfucking blue so far as Gamzee was concerned.  A bunch of tile samples maybe got cracked apart during a demonstration, for instance, and the management people might’ve owed a little more money than expected to various tile companies.  And maybe somebody new joined the apartment’s maintenance crew, now and then — Aradia Megido, exorcist-for-hire, in this case, who Sollux tried to pretend he didn’t think was cute.  She had seemed sort of disappointed to learn her jeans had blood on the knees.  It was a pretty messy job apparently, ghost hunting, which was another thing Karkat said he’d never thought he would ever, ever have to say aloud, like that his boyfriend owned multiple rubber noses and it was sort of weirdly cute watching him eat cake frosting out of the package.

Sometimes Gamzee woke up half-screaming and clutching at the air, sure part of him was smothered up in some dumb brick wall.  Karkat reminded him that they could move the fuck out of there any day, when shit like that happened.  Or, if not “any day,” then...  Soon, at least. Clowning didn’t exactly make a whole motherfucking ton…  And it wasn’t like Karkat had sold _too_ much of his writing yet…   But that didn’t mean they couldn’t afford someplace a little less haunted.  Even if they  _had_  gotten a remodeled kitchen, and a discreet ghost Community Planning Meeting-related discount on their rent.

Gamzee flopped back down next to Karkat, most times like that.  He took a shaky, mostly-clean-air breath and maybe kissed Karkat’s neck.

“‘S good, for now,” he might say.  “Too late to pack up any motherfucking bags, right?”

And Karkat might snicker into his tangled hair.  Might say, “You know what I meant.  Fucking clown.”


End file.
